meaning of zero

1. A cipher; nothing; naught.
2. The point from which the graduation of a scale, as of a thermometer, commences.
3. Fig. : The lowest point; the point of exhaustion; as, his patience had nearly reached zero.
4. ZERO An object oriented extension of Z. ["Object Orientation in Z", S. Stepney et al eds, Springer 1992]. [Jargon File]
5. zero 1. 0, ASCI character 48. Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter "O" the 15th letter of the English alphabet. In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is centre-dotted and letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an American football stood on end or the reverse, youre probably looking at a modern character display though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers. If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, youre probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype Scandinavians, for whom slashed-O is a letter, curse this arrangement. If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers Scandinavians curse *this* arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide. Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a *reversed* slash. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O. [Jargon File]
6. the quantity that registers a reading of zero on a scale

Related Words

zero | zero and add packed | zero assignment | zero coupon bond | zero hour | zero in | zero point | zero tolerance | zero-content | zero-coupon bond | zero-coupon security | zero-sum game | zero-tolerance policy | zeroes | zeros | zeroth | zeroth law of thermodynamics |

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